Transcriptions recital

Dear friends, I hope you are all well! Again I see I need to catch up with listening...good to see several Godowsky recordings here! I just finished uploading the videos from my first-ever recital, on October 30 and wanted to share them here as well, because I received lots of helpful feedback on my home recordings of the pieces (since the home recordings are are all up here, I'm not submitting new MP3s now). I think I also never told Alf how much I appreciated listening to that Volodos live recording - it's awesome and has changed some prejudices I had about Volodos. A very late but heartfelt thanks!

The recital was a great experience and more than made up for all the preparation work, although I was quite a bit nervous... I have moved on since then and am now happily studying some original piano works as well, Bach, Haydn, Scriabin (my teacher has convinced me that I should not entirely dismiss the main part of what has been written for our instrument ). The current little "project" is to prepare for the Amateur Competition in Paris in April. I hope to meet many fellow piano geeks there

Brahms: Variations from String Sextet op. 18

Glinka-Balakirev: The Lark

Schubert-Tausig: Marche Militaire

Chopin: Souvenir de Paganini

Mozart-Thalberg: Voi che Sapete

Schubert-Liszt: Ständchen (Serenade)

Wagner-Liszt: Tannhäuser Overture (Part 1, Part 2)

Encore: Schubert-R.Strauss: Kupelwieser Waltz

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Program Notes (PDF, German only)

P.S. I also played another piece, Busoni's Carmen Fantasy (right before the Tannhäuser), but I'm not so happy with that one to share it. I'll have another opportunity to try soon again...

 

Hi Tobias, have my sincere congrats for the successful recital!
Anyway I did search for these recital videos in your YT channel already in November. Then I found Tanhäuser and the encore. I'm listening to some of the rest now. I think you did very good job in Brahms. I'm very impressed! The Military March was also good. I've heard this is very difficult to play. I could see that you were a bit nervous, but you were also very successful in controlling yourself throughout the recital! Apart from all the other good things in your recital you gained my full respect just for performing a recital with so many pieces. (I have to play only two pieces after a week, and I'm very anxious about that... BTW the two pieces are also transcriptions :wink

May I ask which recording it is? The recital of transcriptions? (I think it's the first cd of him, or not?)

I'm looking forward to hear those composer from you!

Oh Du fleißiger!! Your passion and dilligence as of an amature pianist is always exemplary for me since I became aquainted with you here Have much fun in preparing that competition!

 

Wow Tobias, you are really making a name for yourself ! Great that you can give recitals like this, and very brave to enter the Paris competition. The level is these competetions is staggeringly high but you can do it. Was the recital well attended ? No recording contract yet ?

 

Hi Hye-Jin, many thanks for listening and your nice comments! I uploaded the Tannhaeuser and the encore before, but the rest only now since it still takes me some time to combine audio (from mic) and video (from camera) for each piece... Yes, I think the nervousness is quite apparent (or at least to people who know me), and also for the first time polishing so many pieces at the same time was something I was not used to.

So now, what are the two pieces you are playing? Is it in a class recital? In any case, best of luck! Are you still in beautiful Tuebingen?

I don't know since I only have the isolated MP3. I guess it was never released on a CD, but rather a bootledgged live recording. Maybe Alfonso knows the source. In any case, I liked it a lot.

Thanks Chris! I'm going to the competition mainly to meet other piano geeks in real life, but also to have a goal to work towards - these things seem to help me with staying motivated.

It was in the music hall of a local school, and the hall was full with over 100 people. And these were only people that I knew, mostly colleagues from work (some of the benefits of working in a big company is getting to know so many people). I did not want to advertise it in the local newspaper and music shop, because I thought having people I know would make me less nervous but I realize now it's just the opposite....

I think the market for Florence Foster Jenkins types is already saturated so they don't need me... :lol:

 

Crap ! You don't even remotely look like her.
OTOH, you probably sing just as bad :lol:

 

Indeed! Maybe I should try to use this "talent" (a la Glenn Gould?) :wink:

 

I just study there and live in Reutlingen. It's only ten minutes from Tübingen by train. I had lived in Tü but the dormitory was so loud, so dirty, so expensive etc. that I moved to here where I also began to play the piano and to take lessons again The occasion of my playing is a new year's meeting of Reutlinger pastors. I had practiced on a Steinway at a church building and got aquainted with a pastor. He organize that meeting every year and I have been invited to open the meeting by playing the piano three times so far. The meething took place where I practiced, therefore I knew that grand well. However that building is now under the reconstruction, so I will play on an unknown instrument. That is one of the reasons of my worrying... BTW on what kind of piano did you play in your recital? Did you select one yourself or just use the grand in that hall? If it was the former case, I bet such an experience is really exciting!!
And where do you live now? You wrote you moved after the recital. Are you still in Basel?
Oh, I almost forgot this. The transcriptions which I will play are written by Rachmaninov from the violin partita in E Major of Bach. The first piece was posted by me on AR just for learning thru the feedbacks' sake. Yours is very welcome, too

Alfonso seems to have such rare but very good materials :wink:

 

Hi Tobias!

You're welcome for the Volodos file. There are many prejudices about his musicianship, especially because of the flamboyant repertoire that made him famous at the beginning of the career, but much of what is largely available now (officially or not) should dispel any misgivings about the fact he's a very fine musician, beyond the virtuoso façade.

Congratulations for your recital, what you did is quite astounding. That's the kind of program that even a professional pianist would be frightened to play in front of a public, let alone the amateur. You can't blame yourself too much if everything didn't go as planned, but you have learnt an awful lot of difficult stuff in a relatively short time. As we say here, what doesn't choke you, feeds you. So far so good.

Hye-Jin, the Volodos recording comes from a recital held in Chicago in November 2000. Maybe Monica went to it?